'The Fault in Our Stars': John Green, Shailene Woodley, Ansel Elgort on loving the book, making the movie

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- It's OK to cry. John Green cried regularly on the set of "The Fault in Our Stars." Several people cried at the screening I attended. I've heard from others who loved the book but are concerned about seeing the movie for fear that they will collapse into buckets of tears. Really, it's OK.

"The Fault in Our Stars," the movie adaptation of Green's tremendously popular novel, opens nationwide Friday, June 6th. Directed by Josh Boone, it stars Shailene Woodley as Hazel Grace Lancaster and Ansel Elgort as Augustus Waters.

The two teens meet in a cancer support group and embark on a grand relationship that includes helping out their friend Isaac (Nat Wolff) and meeting a reclusive author named Peter Van Houten (Willem Dafoe).

The novel has a wonderful voice and tone and is terrifically funny. And for all of us who have been disappointed countless times by Hollywood ruining our favorite books, you may be relieved to learn that the movie is extremely faithful to the novel. Amazingly, the film retains the voice, tone and humor of the book.

It is a great love story that should be one of the huge hits of the summer. And yes, there are tearful moments. But "The Fault in Our Stars" is not a "cancer movie." It is about much more than illness.

Our most recent encounter with the TFIOS phenomenon did not involve tears, but screams. Thousands (mostly young women) turned out for a fan event in Cleveland on May 7 that featured Green, Woodley, Elgort and Wolff. The frenzied fans screamed and screeched and Tweeted and Instagramed and screamed some more. The main draw was Green.

View full sizeFans of John Green and "The Fault in Our Stars" go bonkers at the TFIOS fan event in Cleveland's Tower City Center on May 7.Lonnie Timmons III, The Plain Dealer

Cleveland was chosen because Ohio racked up the most votes (more than 200,000) in a contest on Tumblr to snag a stop in the TFIOS four-city tour. The foursome started in Miami, and after Cleveland headed to Nashville, Tennessee, and Dallas.

The Miami event was so fan-crazed that, according to one insider, the film studio told the Cleveland organizers that whatever security they had arranged at Tower City, they should "quadruple it."

I caught up with Green and company the following morning at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel before they left for Nashville. Cleveland's adoration fest made quite an impression on Woodley and Elgort.

"This might sound awful," said Woodley, "but afterwards, I got off-stage and I was like, 'Wow, I have a newfound empathy for the first time in my life with that whole 'rock star' thing,' of getting off the stage and making decisions that aren't necessarily the best. The energy up there was so immense. Everyone was like, 'Let's go to dinner,' and I was like, 'I can't go to dinner, I have to go to the gym!' The amount of adrenaline that's pumping through your body is so intense."

Elgort, who was knifing away at a stack of pancakes, said, "The crazy thing is rock stars do drugs and stuff to try and get even higher. That's like the highest I've ever been in my life."

The duo has already appeared in a smash movie this year, "Divergent" (Woodley starred as Tris and Elgort played her brother, Caleb, in the tale of battling dystopian factions). So they know something about beloved-books-turned-films. But they still weren't prepared for the uber-buzz of "The Fault in Our Stars," the book that wasn't even supposed to become a movie.

"I did not want to sell the rights to 'Fault in Our Stars,'" said Green. "I did not let my agent send it out before it was published. I've had some negative experiences with Hollywood over the years."

And not just Green. Scores of authors have been burned by producers' promises, only to see their words and characters altered beyond recognition.

"I think people start out wanting to make a movie that is faithful to the book, but then, over time, there are a lot of cooks in the kitchen, and there are a lot of people who need to say yes in order for a movie, even a small-budget movie like this, to get made," said Green.

"People say this has a tiny budget, but $12 million is a lot of money to normal people. It's a lot of money to me! So in that process of trying to get enough people to say yes, it can get watered down or move in a different direction, and that can be discouraging."

Still, Hollywood came knocking. Green, whose other books include "Paper Towns," "An Abundance of Katherines" and "Looking for Alaska," and who has an avid following online for his Vlogbrothers series on YouTube with his brother Hank, is a hot commodity. When the producers, including Wyck Godfrey, convinced Green that they were going to truly honor the book, he signed on.

"The first thing Wyck Godfrey said to me was, 'It's not going to be easy getting a movie made where the main female romantic lead has tubes in her nose in every scene in the movie. But she's going to have tubes in her nose in every scene.' "

Hazel Grace has weak lungs and is hooked up to a portable oxygen tank.

"I mean," he continued, "there are a lot of people over the course of the project who would have said, 'Can she get healthier toward the end?' It's hard to make a movie about sick people that isn't melodramatic. And there are no real healthy people in the script being redeemed by the sick people's illness. That was a very conscious choice by me and then the screenwriters."

One way to further safeguard his baby would have been to write the script himself. But Green never considered it.

"One of my less-than-stellar Hollywood experiences taught me that I am not a good screenwriter, and also that I don't particularly enjoy the process of watching that sausage get made," he said.

"I wrote a draft of 'Paper Towns' many years ago. And now, fortunately, [Scott] Neustadter and [Michael H.] Weber, the guys who wrote 'The Fault in Our Stars,' are writing the 'Paper Towns' script. It's a different set of skills.

"Screenwriters have to have a deep understanding of story and plot and structure, and I'm not very good at that stuff. I remember reading the script for the first time, waiting to have that feeling that a writer always has, that 'I can't believe this is missing' moment. And everything that was missing, I was like, 'Yeah, that makes sense.'"

It took Green about 10 years to write the novel. It was inspired by his experiences working as a student chaplain at a children's hospital in Indianapolis, and in particular from his friendship with Esther Grace Earl, a young woman with metastasized papillary thyroid cancer who died in 2006. She was 16. Hazel Grace is 16. "The Fault in Our Stars" is dedicated to Esther Earl.

But as everyone involved in the project is quick to point out, TFIOS is "not a cancer movie!"

"It's about love and hope and loving life," said Wolff, who recently signed on to star as Quentin Jacobsen in "Paper Towns."

"The sickness is just an issue. A lot of people deal with their pain with humor. That's one of the reasons I loved the book and this character so much. I feel really lucky to be in this movie. It's based on this beloved book. There's no car chases, there's no explosions, and I don't turn into a goblin. It's just a small story about a couple of people."

Woodley, who first burst on the movie scene as George Clooney's feisty daughter in "The Descendants" and has three "Divergent" sequels lined up, was deeply moved when she read Green's novel. She wrote the author and later the director passionate letters about how much she wanted to be involved with the film. Boone and his casting director tested nearly 200 actresses before settling on Woodley.

"Josh has said he was very intent on not casting me," said Woodley.

"Really?" asks Elgort.

"Yeah, in like 50 interviews," offers Woodley, still bristling a bit. Eventually, Boone, who flew to Chicago to test her while she was shooting "Divergent," saw that Woodley (who everyone calls Shai) was Hazel. As narrator, star and soul of the film, Woodley delivers an excellent performance.

"For this movie, I'm so excited for the world to get a free therapy session," she said. "It's so cathartic and so healing. And there's this whole thing about being a young adult book and a young adult movie. I don't think it's a young adult movie. It is so relatable for every single age. We shut down our feelings and emotions so much to maintain our cookie-cutter dispositions. This movie strips that all down."

For Green, the greatest test of the film's quality came very close to home. And, yes, it involved tears.

"I saw it with my wife, Sarah, which meant so much to me, because she has been with me through this whole process, and it was a difficult process at times. A lot of times, I thought I would never finish the book, and certainly neither of us ever thought it would be a movie," he said.

"We were in a little screening room, alone together, holding hands almost the entire movie. My wife has cried maybe seven times in our marriage. She is a tough, tough person. She has birthed two children and never cried either time. And when I looked over at her about an hour into the movie, and she had tears streaming down her face, I knew that it was good."